PSYCH 350 TEAMWORK FINAL
What factors affect the implementation of a solution?
* Commitment from a team * Team should think about implementation issues when making a decision * Consider the people, time, and resources needed for implementation * Evaluation --> provides information for future problem identification and solving
What are different types of diversity?
* Demographic: Gender, Race and ethnicity, Age, Sex * Psychological: Values, beliefs, and attitudes, Personality * Organizational: Status, Occupation, Department, Tenure
What are some of the factors that reduce the importance of leadership?
* Historically important leaders led during dramatic times * Competent, well-trained, and responsible employees need leaders to a lesser degree * Highly structured routine jobs do not require a leader to supervise * Organizing into teams and developing a cohesive team spirit reduces the need for leaders
Why is the importance of dealing with diversity issues increasing for teams?
* More women and ethnic minorities entering the workforce * Age and generational diversity as retirement ages are being extended * Increasing diversity in the workforce enables organizations to be more sensitive to the diverse markets in society
What is the value of using a structured approach to generating and evaluating alternatives?
* Participation by all team members is encouraged * The whole team accepts the idea (or at least accepts the least objectionable proposal) * Participating in the decision process creates a sense of commitment to it
What factors influence who becomes a team's leader?
* Tend to be tall, older, male, good physical fitness * Extroverts - confidence, dominance, and enthusiasm * Participation rate --> more likely to select most frequent communicator
What are the main approaches to studying leadership, and what are their implications?
* Trait or Personality --> Use tests to select good leaders * Behavioral --> Train people to be good leaders * Situational --> Understand substitutes for leadership * Contingency --> Link traits or behaviors to situations
What are the main steps in the rational approach to problem solving?
1) Problem recognition and definition 2) Problem analysis 3) Generate alternative solutions 4) Select solutions 5) Implement solution New Section 2 Page 9 5) Implement solution 6) Evaluate outcome i. If successful, continue on to next phase ii. If not, get feedback and go back to alternative solutions
How does the normative decision-making theory help teams make decisions?
Addresses how to choose how to make a decision Determines how important quality, speed, and support are In general, group approaches should be used when a high quality decision is needed or team acceptance is needed
What factors disrupt the ability of teams to make good decisions?
Avoiding disagreements to come to an agreement, leads to implementation probs Negative emotions lead to safe, generic solutions
What are the benefits of and problems with self-managing teams?
Benefits: * Reduces the need for managers and allows the remaining managers to focus on tasks outside the team * When they are successful, they encourage the empowerment of employees and the development of team member skills * Strengthening team members' belief that they can influence the strategic and operational activities of the team Problems: * Can be a difficult process * Requires new approaches to leadership
How do cognitive processes, leader behavior, and social processes explain the causes of diversity problems?
Cognitive Processes: * People categorize their social world and treat members of those groups differently * Stereotypes make people in a category seem similar to one another, yet different from us ▪ Problem isn't the categorization, it's that the process creates biases Leader Behavior: * The team leader decides early in the relationship whether the team member is part of the in-group or the out-group (before they know of the member is part of the in-group or the out-group (before they know of the new member's performance) ○ The impact of this early impression has long-lasting effects on the relationship between the member, leader, and team • Social Process ○ When groups compete, their members form prejudices about each other ○ A person can classify his/her social world in a variety of ways, but prejudices arise when the out-group is perceived as a threat to an individual's resources or power
How are consultative, democratic, and consensus decision making different?
Consultative: leader consults with team then decides Democratic: team votes, majority rules Consensus: all members participate and accept decision
What are the two main types of organizational cultures that affect the use of teams?
Control cultures: status and power driven, hierarchical and tightly controlling, relations are untrusting, difficult to operate teams Commitment cultures: reduces organizational levels, focuses on quality, and adopts methods to encourage participation and open communication
What is the difference between the direct effects and secondary effects of technology?
Direct Effects: * Goals of virtual teams are to improve task performance, overcome the constraints of time and space, and increase the range and speed of access to information Secondary Effects: * Unanticipated social and organizational effects * The lack of social information when using communication technology may limit the development of social relations in a team and organization * Communicating via technology may add to cultural miscommunications because of the lack of nonverbal cures in an email or videoconference
What are the main types of team-building activities?
Goal setting: clarify purpose of team, set specific objectives through consensus building Role clarification: clarify individual roles, team norms, and shared responsibilities, reduces role conflict Interpersonal process skills: work on decision making, problem solving, and negotiating Cohesion building: foster team spirit and build interpersonal connections among team members; strengthens team morale, increases trust and cooperation Problem solving: analyze problems, diagnose, and develop solutions
How do group polarization and groupthink affect a team's decision-making process?
Group polarization: discussion leads to final decision that is more extreme than the average Results from team members shifting positions towards the norm, resulting in extreme (more risky or more safe) decision Groupthink: desire to maintain good relations outweighs good decision Three factors: structural decision making flaws, group cohesiveness, and external pressure
How do different dimensions of international culture affect teamwork?
Individualism vs Collectivism Individualism more creative, greater comfort, resistance to teams Collectivism has high group loyalty, cooperation, harmony Low power/status distance vs High power/status distance Low-power cultures less willing to accept authority of others on basis of position High-power can be a problem because members may accept team leader's view too easily, participation is low Risk taking vs Risk avoidance Risk taking value change, action oriented, open and willing to new ideas Risk avoidance cultures value social harmony more than change, avoid conflict, maintain status quo Modern vs Traditional
How do leadership characteristics vary by the roles that leaders perform an the amount of power they possess?
Leader assigned by organization: * Leader may have authority to make the team's decisions * Useful when the task is very complex and structure is needed Leader is elected or rotated: * Typically has limited power and serves primarily as facilitator Manager: * Given power and authority by the organization over subordinates * Responsible for the actions of subordinates * Has the authority to make decisions * Responsible for handling personnel issues (i.e. hiring or rewards) Shared Leadership: * Roles may be shared on the basis of different tasks performed by the team * Focuses on participative decision making, developing social relations and support, and empowerment
What are the key elements of situational leadership theory? How does a leader's behavior relate to the readiness level of the group?
Leadership styles: * Directing (high task, low relationship) * Directing (high task, low relationship) * Coaching (high task, high relationship) * Supporting (low task, high relationship) * Delegating (low task, low relationship) Team readiness is based on the skills of team members, their experience with the task, their capacity to set goals, and their ability to assume responsibility: * As the team's readiness level increases, the leader's behavior shifts from directing down to delegating The leader needs to adjust his style of acting relative to the readiness of the team Leadership is a developmental process, and the leader's behavior should promote team maturity or readiness
What are the main advantages and disadvantages in using groups to make decisions?
Pro: pool information, identify errors, commitment Cons: Pool?, slow, problems
How do the characteristics of the problem, team, and environment affect the way a team analyzes a problem?
Problem: * The more severe a problem is, the more likely it is to be identified as a hindrance * Chronic problems that are less visible are often ignored * Common for a team to select only part of a complex problem to analyze and solve, as a way to simplify the situation Team: * Teams with norms supporting communication likely to identify problems * Closed teams less likely to be aware of problems * Open teams better able to prepare for problems in the future * Unsuccessful teams ignore problems in place of performance Environment: * The rapidity of change creates a need to stay alert
What factors are useful for evaluating a decision-making approach?
Quality, speed and acceptance/support
What factors produce team decisions that are superior to individual decisions?
Successfully pool resources: composition, diversity of opinion, communication, difficulty of problem
Why should problem-solving teams use structured techniques to analyze and solve problems?
Techniques structure the group process and better enable the team to focus on the problem
What are the benefits of and problems with structure decision-making techniques, such as the nominal group technique?
Techniques: ○ The Delphi and Ringi techniques use only written communication ○ The nominal group technique requires each group member to generate ideas independently and then to interact only to choose among alternative ideas ▪ Allows decisions to be made by larger groups of people who do not have to meet • Benefits: ○ Produce decisions that are as good as or better than decisions produced from group discussions ○ More efficient than group discussions ○ People are satisfied with their levels of participation using these approaches • Problems: ○ Based on the assumption that socializing, unequal participation, and other aspects of group discussions are problems ○ Detachment and impersonal atmosphere of these techniques reduces people's acceptance and commitment to a decision ○ Political acceptability of the solution may not be as great as a solution produced by a group discussion
How do teams typically solve problems?
The Descriptive Approach: many teams start the problem solving process by generating solutions * Generate alternatives and pick the best * Once a solution becomes the focus, the team analyzes it to determine whether it is correct * If majority of members believe it is the best solution, the solution is accepted
What are some reasons why organizations do not use team building?
Too much focus on financial issues Limited by lack of expertise in team building Managers don't understand the benefits of team building Team members are skeptical of team building activities
What are the trait approach and the expectation approach to explaining diversity?
Trait Approach: * Assumes that diversity affects how people act * Peoples' differences affect how they interact in a team Expectations Approach: * Focuses on the beliefs that people have about what other people are like * Expectations change how they interact with people from different backgrounds
What skills are taught in teamwork training programs?
• Adaptability - the ability to use information form the environment to change how the team operates • Shared situational awareness - the development of an understanding of the team's internal and external environment and dynamics • Performance monitoring and feedback - the ability to accurately monitor performance, provide constructive feedback, and use this information to improve operations • Leadership and team management - the ability to direct and coordinate the activities of the team • Interpersonal relations - the ability to facilitate interactions to resolve disputes and motivate performance • Coordination - the ability to organize the team's resources and actions so that performance is effective • Communication - the ability to effectively exchange information with other team members • Decision making - the ability to gather and analyze information and use this information to solve problems
What are some of the different definitions of team building?
• An organizational development intervention that focuses on improving the operations of work teams • Regularly taking time to evaluate the performance of teams to identify obstacles and develop patterns of work that are more productive • Set of approaches designed to improve team's social relations and interactions to increase team effectiveness
What are some ways to use brainstorming, the nominal group technique, and brain writing to improve team creativity?
• Brainstorming ○ Build an open climate ○ Conduct research ○ Generate creative ideas ○ Sort ideas and select ○ Do some refining ○ Repeat process if needed • Nominal Group Technique ○ Team is brought together ○ Facilitator announces the question ○ Each participant spends 20 to 30 minutes writing down ideas ○ Ideas are listed for all participants to see ○ Group asks clarifying questions about the ideas • Brainwriting ○ Team is brought together ○ Facilitator announces the question ○ People write an idea on a paper and pass the paper to the right ○ Next person writes a new idea that builds off of the previous ○ Post it notes are also useful
What factors improve teams' abilities to be creative?
• Brainstorming ○ Criticism is strictly forbidden ○ Free thinking and wild notions are encouraged ○ Numerous ideas are sought ○ Combining and building on the ideas of others is good • Brainstorming can be improved by: ○ Asking participants to think of ideas alone before the session ○ Facilitating the group discussion to make participation more equal ○ By ensuring that people do not criticize presented ideas • Psychologically safe environment to encourage constructive conflict • Highly creative teams are composed of members who are somewhat familiar with each other • Teams that learn by doing or have direct experience working in an area are more creative than teams with little or indirect experience • Diverse teams generate more ideas
What are the challenges of using cross-functional teams?
• Competing viewpoints that are necessary for creativity create conflicts that hurt team relationships ** Success only happens if team members are willing to share their knowledge and learn from each other * Learning to manage conflict constructively is the main challenge * Conflicts relating to stereotyping, distrust, and biases limit communication among members and prevent teams from negotiating agreements even when the agreements are in everyone's best interest
How can teams encourage creativity as an ongoing team process?
• Creative synergy encourages ongoing creativity • Constructive controversy results in team members sharing a wider range of ideas, more closely analyzing ideas, and developing more original solutions • Psychological safety creates an open learning climate for discussion and innovative thinking • Team members need to feel comfortable expressing their opinions as well as giving and receiving feedback from others Example: Pixar starts with creative ideas, makes prototypes, but continue to meet and discuss and iterate on ideas throughout development
What are the criteria of effective teams and the symptoms of ineffective teams?
• Criteria for Effective Teams: ○ Clear and measurable performance goals ○ Roles and assignments that are accepted by team members ○ Climate of trust, psychological safety, and support ○ Open and participative communication environment ○ Effective problem solving and decision making ○ Supportive leadership ○ Constructive handling of conflict ○ Supportive organizational culture and structure ○ Ability to monitor performance and make needed changes • Symptoms of Ineffective Teams ○ Decrease in team performance ○ Increase of complaints from team members ○ Evidence of unproductive conflicts among members ○ Confusion about assignments, roles, and relationships ○ Decisions misunderstood or not enacted ○ Lack of involvement from team members ○ Lack of initiative, creativity, or effective problem solving ○ Ineffective meetings with low participation ○ High dependency on the leader
What are some of the organizational factors that affect creativity?
• Freedom • Management • Encouragement • Recognition • Cooperation • Time • Challenge • Motivation Pro: Problems faced are too complex for individual, Cross-disciplinary perspectives Con: creative ideas often rejected due to uncertainty, risky ideas not rewarded Must foster environment that promotes task and social elements of creativity
What are the different ways of defining creativity?
• From the standpoint of a person - the inventiveness of a creative person • From the standpoint of a product - some products, things, or ideas that are innovative and creative • From the standpoint of a process - the process that produces creative things
How do communications and collaboration technologies support teamwork?
• Gather and present information for a team • Help team members communicate both internally and externally • Collaboration technologies like group support systems can help team process information • Electronic meeting systems can be used to structure the group process through meeting agendas, project management tools
Why do teams have problems in developing creative ideas?
• Groups may develop negative or critical communication climates that do teams have problems in developing creative ideas? discourage creativity • Slower and less efficient process because groups take longer than individuals • Conformity and domineering members • Cognitive interference = the disruption of thinking that occurs while one is waiting to speak in a group ○ Creative ideas are forgotten, time for discussion can run out, the topic can change and become irrelevant • Social inhibitors = anxiety about how others evaluate members' ideas and social loafing
What are the psychological factors that help and hurt individual creativity?
• Help: ○ Domain-relevant skills = skills, knowledge, and talent people have in a particular application area ○ Creativity-relevant skills = the appropriate cognitive styles that encourage creativity and knowledge about creativity techniques ○ Appropriate task motivation = intrinsic motivation and attitude toward the task ▪ Motivation from personal interest rather than from external reward • Hurt: ○ Extrinsic rewards ▪ Being rewarded to perform a task may sometimes reduce the intrinsic motivation for the task ▪ The use of rewards focuses the creator on satisfying the person or organization providing the rewards --> try to satisfy someone else rather than being creative ○ Evaluation apprehension ▪ When team members are concerned about appearing stupid, outrageous, or inappropriate, their anxiety limits creativity ○ Our internal mental sets or paradigms ▪ It is difficult to view a situation from a new perspective
What are some of the approaches organizations can use to create a context that supports diversity?
• Increasing Awareness • Improving Group Process Skills • Creating a Safe Environment • Improving Organizational Issues
What factors disrupt a team's ability to solve problems?
• Limited time, money, and information are constraints on following a structured approach to problem solving * People seek "satisficing" solutions rather than the optimal one * Perfection is expensive and time consuming • Agree to avoid conflict • Competition may encourage political advocacy rather than a search for the best alternative
How does coaching improve the operation of teams?
• Motivational - enhances commitment to both the team and task • Consultative - helps the team analyze and improve operations • Educational = learn from the experience and enables members to use these lessons in future team activities
How does a team's culture affect its performance?
• Opens possibility of knowledge sharing - collaborative culture • Supportive team cultures reduce the negative impacts of work stress • Does not affect what is learned in training, but does affect whether the newly learned skills are applied • Companies that are successful using teams often have norms that foster participation and innovation • Provides a way to unite team members who have different views of teamwork and teamwork practices
What are the advantages of using multiple team sessions to encourage creativity?
• People are often creative at odd moments when they are not thinking about the problem • Difficult to be creative on command - stress and time pressure tend to make individuals and teams more conservative and less creative • Teams reconvenes to make the selection process to allow team members to enter new ideas over time
What are some of the techniques that teams can use to help in their problem- solving efforts?
• Problem Analysis - to help in problem analysis stage • Criteria Matrix - to assist in selecting a solution • Action Plans - improve the implementation of a solution • Force Field Analysis - to understand the factors that affect any change program
What is organizational culture, and what are the effects it has on people in organizations?
• Refers to the shared values, beliefs, and norms of an organization • An organization's customs, rituals, and traditions help reveal the underlying values that guide organizational decision making • All members share the culture ○ Provides structural stability for the organization because its influence is pervasive and slow to change • Affects both the internal operations of the organization and how it relates to its external environment • When the shared beliefs and assumptions held by working groups are similar across organizations, the organizations have strong cultures • Organizations culture is one of the largest predictors of the successful use of teams by companies ○ In a supportive organizational culture, managers are less likely to resist using teams, and there are better relations between teams and other parts of the organization ○ Self-managing teams are much more likely to be successful in organizations whose culture supports empowerment and teamwork
What are the main problems that diversity can cause for teams?
• Related to miscommunication that reduces or disappears over times • Impact of diversity on a work team depends on the organizational climate • Surface-level diversity (personal attributes - differences in personality, values, and various demographic variables) may lead to problems with communication and team cohesion, and increases in conflict, but often has mixed or limited effects on overall team performance
What are the functional roles and responsibilities of team leaders?
• Setting the direction for the team • Managing the team's operations • Developing the team's leadership abilities • Promote team learning by giving performance feedback to the team and using this information to help the team develop performance strategies that are more effective • Don't micromanage, but support and empower teams • Establish a context for a team • Facilitate internal operations
What are the main characteristics used to analyze communication technologies?
• Speed, interactive, richness, social presence, and document message
What strategies can transitional teams use to manage cultural differences?
• Strategies - spending more time initially starting the team, training the team, and using strong leadership ○ Should schedule face-to-face meetings early in the team's existence to develop personal relationships and a shared understanding among team members ○ Shared goals, norms, member roles, and agreement about performance criteria should be established ○ Should be developed at the onset of teamwork to reduce any later misunderstandings ○ Should spend more effort developing product plans and other types of project management structures ○ Face-to-face meetings need to be scheduled at key points in the plan to clarify any misunderstandings about the team's progress • Increased awareness and appreciation of cultural differences encourages collaboration because team members are better able to interpret communications and adjust their behavior to allow better coordination of efforts
What factors relate to the effectiveness of teamwork training?
• Team members must understand their roles, coordinate their actions with others, and understand how their actions interact with others • Training is required to develop task-related skills and knowledge, teamwork skills, and knowledge of the roles of the other team members • Teams need training on process improvement skills so they can learn how to improve performance • More effective when it focuses on identified training competencies or skills, when the team is trained together, when they have an opportunity to practice their new skills, and when they receive feedback about their performance • Training the team together develops the team's mental model and transactive memory ○ Have a shared understanding of the team's goals, norms, and resources, including understanding of the roles, knowledge, and skills of each team member
What are the main types of teamwork training?
• Team resource management training (TRM) ○ Training program to develop a defined set of teamwork competencies so a team can operate without error under stressful circumstances • Cross training and interpersonal training ○ Used to increase flexibility of team members ○ Team members are trained in the technical skills of two or more jobs, allowing the team to assign members to the tasks that need to be performed • Action learning ○ Focuses on developing teams that can analyze and solve important, real- life problems in their organizations ○ Combines training with developing innovative solutions to existing organizational problems
What are the differences between the performances of homogeneous versus diverse teams?
• The information/decision-making perspective states that differences in knowledge, skills, and perspectives may lead to higher quality and more creative decisions and improved performance • The social categorization perspective states that differences among team members may lead to in-group/out-group divisions within the team that decrease team member friendships, trust, and cooperation, and disrupt the group process
What is a team's culture and how is it created?
• The shared perception of how the team should operate to accomplish its goals ○ Includes team norms, member roles, and patterns of interaction • Created by incorporating cultural norms and values from their organization and society ○ Behavior patterns that emerge early in a team's life define how the team operates in the future ○ Leaders should try to establish an appropriate culture early in the team's life because it is easier to begin to establish a culture than it is to change an existing one
How does action learning develop and improve teams in an organization?
• The team gains skills and knowledge, then shares this knowledge with the organization • It is an approach to continual learning that encourages experimentation, allows mistakes, offers support, and promotes feedback • It is a shift from a culture of training to a culture of learning • In process of solving problems and reflecting on team performance, members learn how to create and operate as effective problem-solving teams • Teams learn new approaches to problems and how to communicate knowledge • Promotes learning and effective use of resources
What factors help improve a team's ability to solve problems?
• View problems from a variety of viewpoints to better understand the problem • Rather than relying on its own opinions, gather data and research a problem before making a decision • Consider a variety of options or alternatives before selecting a particular solution • Manage both the task and relational aspects of problem solving • Listen to minority opinions • Test alternative solutions relative to established criteria • Spend time following a structured approach • Equal power among members
How can teams improve their ability to achieve consensus decision making?
○ Avoid arguing for your own position without listening to the position of others ○ Do not change your position just to avoid conflict ○ Do not try to reach a quick agreement by using conflict-reduction approaches, such as voting or tossing a coin ○ Encourage others to explain their position so that you better understand any differences ○ Do not assume that someone must win and someone must lose when there is a disagreement ○ Discuss the underlying assumptions, listen carefully to one another, and encourage the participation of all members ○ Look for creative and collaborative solutions that allow both sides to win rather than compromises where each side only gets some of what it wants
